Origin III Wrap: Dearden dominates, Daley’s disaster but Cleary absent: again

They’ll tell you Origin is about grit and guts, determination and desire.

Just ask Tom Dearden, the clear man of the match here: the halfback tackled everything that moved, scored twice and rushed up in the faces of his opponents whenever possible.

That’s the obvious stuff, the physical manifestation of Origin characteristics. It’s only half the story, however.

Those facets have to be matched in mentality: the guts that comes with pushing the envelope, the desire to create something that might go wrong.

Dearden had those bits too. His opponents didn’t. Nathan Cleary didn’t.

Queensland, again, won against the odds; again, they did what they do in this arena. The final score of 24-12 was a chasm between these sides.

Billy Slater’s permanently reductive line is that every player will be good because they are a Queenslander and Queenslanders don’t let the state down, but when they play like this, you can see why he says it.

If you can do the free stuff, play simply and make your opponents do it the hard way, you’ve always got a chance. The Maroons didn’t make a single handling error until the 70th minute.

By that point, it was 20-6 and game over.

Laurie Daley hasn’t covered himself in glory as a coach in Origin – that’s seven from 18 now, and one series from six attempts – and his tactics here were both naive and boneheaded.

Slater didn’t do anything they haven’t done before, and done before very recently at that, but, the Blues kept banging their head against the wall.

When the game was drifting, Daley sat on his hands. Connor Watson and Hudson Young, his two wildcards, sat on the bench until the 52nd minute.

This was the most elite talent possible reduced to footy-by-numbers. Where Dearden had shown an ability to deviate from the script, Cleary was left repeating it.

Not for the first time, he played Origin as an occasion rather than a match that was taking place in front of him.

Unsure in the system, he got stuck kicking to corners, turning men inside, looking for someone else to win the game when that’s his job.

This was a victory earned by first stopping your opponents. Queensland’s containment strategy was obvious early on, and even more so if you’d seen Slater’s approach before. Every success he’s had as Maroons coach has come with the same defensive tactic.

He attempted to keep the field as narrow as possible, jamming onto Cleary and Jarome Luai at every opportunity, removing Isaah Yeo as a ballplaying option and shutting off supply to the outside backs.

It didn’t matter if the rush defenders actually made the tackle – Queensland missed plenty more, just like they did on this ground in 2022 to win an upset – only that they were in the face of the attack to force them back inside.

That was particularly evident on the Blues’ right, where Gehamat Shibasaki and Kurt Capewell gave Stephen Crichton a cold for most of the first hour.

It was sensible: the first time the Bulldogs’ captain got the ball, he skinned Shibasaki for a clean break, which prompted a coast-to-coast switch from which Latrell Mitchell was able to create an opportunity with a kick.

Thereafter, however, there was nothing. The Blues played almost exclusively within the tramlines, forced back by textbook umbrella defence.

On the other side, the edge defenders for the Blues were all over the place.

The first Queensland try came from a dead miss on Shibasaki by Zac Lomax. It was lucky it hadn’t come earlier, as Mitchell was deceived by Dearden to allow Reuben Cotter through for a break that Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow should have finished.

The second was also a lapse, with Mitchell and Brian To’o unable to stop an offload, which found Angus Crichton sleeping on the play. This time, the Hammer didn’t err, feeding Dearden for a try.

Queensland did what they do best, which is arrive with a plan, enact it to the letter and give nothing away for free. Every try they scored punished a mistake, the Maroons made none of their own.

The Blues seemed unable to react to the situation in front of them. Their long-game plan was clear and largely worked, in that most of the play was in the Queensland end – 75/25 in the first half – but they created zip.

It was both risky and clueless. The Blues threw 25 offloads in the first half – more than double the highest average of any team in the week-to-week NRL – but had no shape, no inventiveness, no solution to an entirely predictable defensive tactic.

Whether Daley had a rethink at half-time or his players did it for him doesn’t really matter. Down 20-0, NSW simply had to score points, which necessitated a deviation from the blueprint.

In a good ball set in the 55th minute, the Blues finally shifted the ball from sideline to sideline, first to Mitchell and then back to Stephen Crichton, moving the Maroons enough to create a space at the corner. It was the first sign of adventure of the night.

Yet it didn’t continue. To’o made a break from deep and found no support pushing with him. The Blues kicked to the opposite corner and got a lucky bounce that forced Xavier Coates to return the ball – and when the winger turned, no chase met him.

These are the non-negotiables of Origin, the commitment and effort, and Queensland had them. They didn’t have much of the invention and creativity, but they had enough. NSW had nothing.